Another

Sunday, September 4, 2011

Exercises For Rotator Cuff Injury – Is It The Best Way To Recover?

It does not sound like a good idea, exercises for rotator cuff injury, especially if you have a rotator cuff problem because any kind of movement is probably the last thing on your mind.

But, if you have torn your your rotator cuff muscles, it may be that exercise is the speediest way to get back to full pain free movement. But, before you go dashing off to the gym you do need to be sure that it is the right sort of exercise and is done at the right time. Lifting weights will only mess up your shoulder more.

You can damage your rotator cuff in a variety of ways and the severity of injuries can vary dramatically. A severe partial tear or a full thickness or complete tear is almost certainly going to need surgery to fix it. The good news is that this type of surgery is now starightforward and the success rate is generally good.

Nearly all partial tears and shoulder impingements respond well to the right type of exercise providing that you start it at the right time in the recovery process. Pain in a rotator cuff injury is usually an indication that you are damaging the muscles further so it is important to listen to your body and avoid any movement that causes pain. This is important if you want the muscles and tendons to start healing properly.

It may be inconvenient but you need to change the way that you do things for a while. You might need to modify how you work or even take time off to rest the injured shoulder properly. At the same time you need to be taking anti-inflammatory drugs such as Ibuprofen to bring down the swelling in the muscle and make it easier to move.

Any type of exercise at this stage must be passive exercises aimed at helping the movement of the shoulder without using the damaged muscles and tendons. One example of this might be to use a stick to raise the injured arm by using the muscles of the healthy arm. Keeping the shoulder moving is important to stop frozen shoulder which can often come about with any shoulder injury.

When you have got the pain under control you can then start to exercise the shoulder using shoulder specific exercises toimprove the rotator cuff muscles. You will be surprised just how quickly the right kind of exercises can get your shoulder moving again. It is important that you do not feel any discomfort when you are doing these exercises. If you do, then stop.

Rotator Cuff Exercises will be exercises aimed at isolating and exercising the muscles that make up the rotator cuff. These are relatively small muscles that will require no weights or very small weights to be used when exercising them. You will probably find that just the natural weight of your arm is enough to start with.

Because these exercises tend to be quite simple exercises without using weights, a lot of them can be done at home which helps a lot with the recovery as it is possible to do them whenever you have a spare ten minutes without the need to go to the gym.

Remember, rest and treat the inflammation, manage the pain before trying any exercises.